What you need to know

• Google Play Movies may be planning to add hundreds of ad-supported free movies.
• Currently, the app only lets users buy or rent movies and TV shows.
• Google already offers a small collection of free, ad-supported movies on YouTube.

Google Play Movies may be planning to add several free, ad-supported movies to its library, according to a new report. The folks at XDA Developers spotted a few strings while performing an APK teardown of the Google Play Movies v18.37 app for Android, which suggest a selection of "free-with-ads" movies could be introduced in the near future.

One of the strings found in the app, as can be seen below, mentions "hundreds of movies, just a few ads." Unlike more traditional streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, Google Play Movies currently lets users rent or buy movies as well as TV shows. However, Google does offer a selection of free, ad-supported movies on YouTube.

At this point, it is unclear if the entire collection of movies on Google Play Movies will be made available to stream for free, or only a small collection of movies. There is also no word on exactly when Google plans to introduce this new model for users. We must also keep in mind that the APK teardown only confirms that Google is planning to offer free movies on Play Movies. It does not guarantee that the feature will actually be rolled out.

If Google Play Movies does start offering ad-supported free movies this year, the move could help boost adoption significantly and make it a much stronger rival to leading streaming services.

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